Confronted by the commonplace phrase “wholesome entertainment,” former International Cinema director Travis Anderson set out to define the difference between entertainment and art and why it’s important.
YEARS AGO, WHILE SERVING AS DIRECTOR of BYU International Cinema, I noticed that when people in our culture reference “good, wholesome entertainment,” they generally use the word “wholesome” in a strange way. They typically don’t mean that the movie, TV show, music, or book they have in mind is actually salutary or edifying—which is how we define the word, of course. They simply mean it is without objectionable content. I also observed that when people speak in this way, they almost always pair the word “wholesome” with “entertainment” rather than with “education” or “art.”
Granted, there is a certain logic to this pairing. After all, most education is edifying by its very nature, so it might seem redundant to say “wholesome education.” And while entertainment by definition is amusing, relaxing, and thereby rejuvenating, it is rarely edifying or nourishing in any substantial sense. By contrast, while art has the capacity to entertain, it is quite frequently a source of genuine edification. So, wouldn’t it seem much more reasonable for “wholesome art” to be a common catchphrase than “wholesome entertainment”?
Aristotle conceded almost twenty-five hundred years ago that there is nothing wrong with entertainment. But perhaps because entertainment is its own reward, he also thought there is nothing inherently praiseworthy about it either. Predictably, he spoke very highly of activities that educate, noting that they cultivate a virtuous character, improve the mind, and occasion what he called “intellectual enjoyment.”1 But most people—today as in Aristotle’s age—generally prefer entertainment to education and art. Why? Aristotle’s answer, in part, was that entertainment appeals primarily to the body, while education and the more demanding forms of art (like dramatic tragedies in Aristotle’s day, and artistic films, music, and literature in ours) mostly engage the mind. In fact, the sensual pleasures derived from entertainment often explicitly free us from our mental cares. By contrast, art and education require attentiveness and effort. So, as Aristotle also pointed out, learning from the arts often involves some degree of mental or physical discomfort rather than physical enjoyment. These differences readily explain why people will opt to watch a pedestrian Hollywood movie instead of a cinematic milestone, or curl up with a cheap paperback novel instead of a literary masterpiece. People prefer entertainment over art and education because both art and education require work to harvest their manifold endowments, while most amusements demand no more effort than reaching for a remote or pulling up a phone app.
So, how has the hackneyed conception of “wholesome entertainment” become so common- place? Perhaps because the phrase itself deceives us into thinking that effortless amusements are somehow beneficial despite the fact that many of them are not wholesome in the least, and sometimes not even innocuous. Activities that only entertain, like binge-watching TV shows, playing computer games, or escaping into trashy popular fiction and movies, can indeed be pleasing and relaxing, but they can also waste our time and money. They can erode rather than strengthen social bonds. And they can cause actual harm if we overindulge in them—as evidenced by the volumes of research linking obesity, heart disease, loneliness, and depression to inordinate time spent with social media or in other solitary and seden- tary pursuits. Even when such entertainments are without objectionable content, they are not necessarily edifying. By contrast, many forms of art—even when they are manifestly entertaining—can reenergize our spirits, expand our talents, strengthen our relations with others, and fan the flames of creativity and divinity within us. Surely this helps explain why Brigham Young encouraged the pioneers at Winter Quarters to praise the Lord not only with prayer but with singing, music, and dancing (D&C 136:28). In sum, art can be both entertaining and educational. In consequence, it can be genuinely wholesome.
Dangers of Applying a Negative Standard
Because entertainment is not necessarily edifying even when it is free from morally objectionable content, mere entertainment is the moral and educational equivalent of diet soda—no unwanted calories, perhaps, but nothing very good for you either. In consequence, when we judge the worth of art solely by its entertainment value and lack of objectionable content, the results are bound to be problematic. The reason is twofold. First, as we have already established, the tendency of amusements to divert us from serious concerns and to please us without edifying us, makes mere entertainment as likely to be harmful as beneficial. Second, value judgments made primarily with reference to a negative standard implicitly require an eye focused precisely on the bad rather than on the good. It is this negative focus I wish to discuss further, for its effects can be particularly pernicious.
One unfortunate consequence of a negative focus when evaluating art is not only an inclination to throw out the baby with the bathwater, but an incapacity to see the baby at all. Conversations with people who have been offended by a book, film, or other work of art often reveal they can remember little or nothing good about the work in question, even when they acknowledge the offending material was trivial. Their well-intended but immoderate focus on the bad apparently dulls their capacity to perceive the good, even within works that others have found both artistically praiseworthy and spiritually uplifting. Then again, as anyone with moral sensitivity is likely to ask, in today’s high-risk world of deceptive and subversive media, wouldn’t it be irresponsible not to exercise at least some degree of active surveillance against evil?
Well, yes, . . . and no. On the one hand, evil indeed demands vigilance against its insidious strategies and forms. On the other hand, we must differentiate vigilance from surveillance. The latter denotes the kind of obsessive attention to evil that is precisely the problem. We don’t vanquish evil or even avoid it by watching, monitoring, and studying it with singular focus. Life certainly demands a moral sensibility or standard with at least a few explicitly formulated “don’ts.” But any moral standard comprised entirely or even predominantly of things to avoid—in other words, any moral outlook obsessively focused on the myriad textures and hues of evil’s chameleon skin—is destined to be detrimental.
I remember once hearing of a visit Spencer W. Kimball made to BYU while he was President of the Church. According to the story, as he walked across campus one of his hosts noticed some young people who were perhaps inappropriately dressed. The host remarked, in a disapproving tone, “Will you just look at those students?” assuming, as the story goes, that President Kimball would endorse his implied criticism. Instead, President Kimball responded, “Yes, aren’t they beau- tiful?” Now, I can’t verify this account, and since it has something of an apocryphal tone it may not have actually happened. But regardless of the story’s veracity, its moral illustrates my point: Where there is good to be found, even where there might also be something bad, we should be able to acknowledge and benefit from the good. We should not refuse an occasion to praise simply because there may also be some reason to condemn, as if something is worthy of appreciation or capable of edification only when it cannot cause any offense. Keeping our gaze obsessively directed toward the bad virtually guarantees we will overlook the good.
Blinding us to goodness is not the only problem with a negative standard, however. Another is the simple fact that any attempt to avoid the bad by making it the center of our focus is an enterprise doomed to failure. When I was first learning to ride a motorcycle, a more experienced rider taught me a life-saving lesson: If you see something dangerous in your path—road debris or patch of loose gravel, for instance—don’t try to avoid it by staring at it; instead, look in the direction you want to go and your gaze will naturally direct you away from whatever you want to avoid. In other words, don’t look where you don’t want to go. However much we intend otherwise, we will inevitably go exactly where we look. The moral parallel is obvious. The only safe and reliable way to avoid the bad is to look constantly for the good. Focusing on the bad, however laudable one’s intentions, will always lead toward that very point of focus. I believe this is why Christ teaches in the New Testament that the way toward a sinless life is not to study sins and their endless variants, as did the Pharisees, but to pattern our life after Him who lived without sin. I also think this is why wise spiritual leaders teach us to vanquish temptation by engaging our mind in some charitable or wholesome activity. Doing so will naturally incline us away from evil by directing our attention toward righteousness. And since we can’t be moving in two directions at once, any move toward the good is simultaneously a move away from the bad.
Seeking Virtue in the Arts
In view of these inherent problems with a negative standard of judgment, why are we so easily and frequently seduced into thinking we can become good solely by not being bad? What has happened to our notion of virtue that we think we can achieve it simply by avoiding vice? I will hazard a guess that our leaders do not intend to endorse a negative standard when they counsel us not to see R-rated films or listen to music with explicit lyrics. They presumably do not intend that we evaluate our activities exclusively in accordance with secular and inconsistently applied rating systems. Nor do they mean to imply that all media without restrictive ratings are edifying. After all, we do not identify something as “virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy” on the basis of what it is not, but on the basis of what it is. Consider in this regard the Thirteenth Article of Faith:
We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.
As Joseph Smith intimated, this article of faith paraphrases an admo- nition of Paul found in his epistle to the Philippians: “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things” (Philippians 4:8). It is worth noting that Joseph’s paraphrase of Paul mentions both chastity and virtue, which implies the one is not reducible to the other. Moreover, only one adjective is emphasized by being repeated twice. It is the word “virtuous.”
As many are aware, the word “virtue” has an interesting pedigree in Western civilization. It is a word commonly used to translate the Greek arete—which is the word originally spoken by Paul in the passage above. Socrates first attributed systematic philosophical importance to this word by identifying its most general sense with a knowledge of the Good. For Aristotle, several generations later, arete designated
the point of moderation between two extremes, and could take the form of either a moral or an intellectual virtue. But in every case for the Greeks, virtue meant goodness or excellence of some kind—excel- lence of character or behavior, excellence in the performance of some function or task, or excellence of aspirations and accomplishments. In sum, virtue referred not just to a lack of bad qualities, but to an abundance of good ones.
If we each pattern our own life after He whose nature was most praiseworthy and exemplary, then both chastity and purity of thought would be necessary components. Yet, a virtuous life in the broader, more substantial sense suggested by Paul and Joseph Smith would also include other character traits wise leaders and the scriptures so often praise: honesty, charity, empathy, benevolence, hopefulness, humility, courage, temperance, and a thirst for knowledge and righteousness.
We cannot develop such traits only by evaluating our choices against a negative list of “don’ts.” We must also actively seek the good—not just in order to do good, but to become good. And it helps to recognize that when we are seeking what is virtuous in human art and learning, they rarely come with everything objectionable completely refined out of them. Even the writings of Shakespeare, lovingly carried across the plains by our pioneer ancestors and so often quoted in LDS books and general conferences, contain their fair share of potentially objectionable material. But we read Shakespeare despite that fact because there is so much to praise among what little there is to condemn.
Learning to Recognize and Value Good Art
How, then, do we seek after excellence when it is sometimes entan- gled with mediocrity and perhaps evil, when both personal maturity and cultural sensitivities play such a determinative role, and when individual perceptions of good and bad often vary widely? On the one hand, we must indeed be selective. Brigham Young once advised, “I cannot say that I would recommend the reading of all books, for it is not all books which are good. Read good books, and extract from them wisdom and understanding as much as you possibly can, aided by the Spirit of God.”2 Then too, as Brigham Young also advised, we must be open-minded and appreciative of all genuine truth and beauty—regard- less of its source: “Seek after knowledge, all knowledge, and especially that which is from above”3 and “Let us not narrow ourselves up; for the world, with all its variety of useful information and its rich hoard of hidden treasure, is before us.”4 John Taylor similarly taught that we should embrace any and all truth that is calculated to benefit us, regardless of “what shape it comes in, who brings it or who believes in it,”5 and he recommended “education and intelligence of every kind.”6
Now, none of these admonitions is an endorsement of art or entertainment that is untruthful, degrading, gratuitously profane or violent, pornographic, or otherwise harmful to the soul. Such material should indeed be avoided in our classrooms and in our private lives, even when that material might appear in a context that includes otherwise praiseworthy elements. So in this regard, a moderate, mature, and prudently formulated conception of things to avoid is appropriate and maybe even necessary. In this respect, we should indeed have a higher standard than that endorsed by the world at large. But that higher standard requires as well a loftier list of goods to pursue. Does this mean devotional art or art produced by and for Latter-day Saints is the only kind of art we should create, view, and allow others to view? No. Is art produced by the world worthless or evil? Of course not. If it were, then we could not praise a Greek tragedy or the Parthenon. Can we produce our own great artists by turning our back on what the Greeks, Romans, Renaissance Italians, French Impressionists, and other artists of the world can teach us? Again, the answer is no. So, the real question is not, how do we completely avoid the world and its influence in producing, teaching, and appreciating art? It is, how do we teach and learn to seek after what is virtuous, lovely, of good report or praiseworthy in the world, and despite the world’s failings? And how do we carry out that search without single-mindedly looking for vice or its absence?
Perhaps the first step in seeking edification in the arts would be to recognize that art is important. Art is not always entertaining; some- times art educates and edifies in a decidedly demanding, unentertaining fashion. And good art, whether by entertaining, educating, or inspiring us, always enriches life in ways no other human enterprise can do. Hence, it should be taken seriously, and at times, with a certain degree of tolerance. As the Scottish philosopher David Hume once claimed, we should be capable of excusing religious and cultural differences in works of art because it would be ridiculous to expect the beliefs and tastes of every culture to resemble our own. More importantly, it would be wrong to assume that artworks that manifest such differences cannot otherwise ennoble and educate us.7 In order for good art to accomplish that enrichment, however, we need to learn and teach the language, history, conventions, and mechanics of the various arts. Such learning would constitute an important second step in seeking after virtue: acquainting ourselves with art that does not merely reflect our own views and preferences, but expands our appreciation for beauty, truth and goodness beyond the confines of our individual experience.
Lastly, all study and analysis of art requires substantial preparation and effort—which is partly why challenging art is often undervalued or criticized. When Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni screened his L’avventura (Italy, 1961) at the Cannes Film Festival in 1962, he was literally booed off the stage. His film was so intellectually demanding that even schooled and experienced critics were challenged beyond their expectations. Nevertheless, after discussion and careful reflection they subsequently awarded his film a special jury prize for inventing a new movie language and for the singular beauty of its images. And later that year L’avventura was rated in a Sight and Sound critics’ poll as the second best film ever made. (It is currently number 21 on the Sight and Sound British Film Institute’s list of the Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time.)8 Real art will always stretch our abilities in ways entertainment will not. And we must prepare for such challenges. But that is part of what makes art praiseworthy.
Preparing to Create and Appreciate Great Art
Boyd K. Packer was once asked in an interview, “Do you still think that art makes a difference, that the arts are important to us as human beings on this earth?” He replied, “Well, just erase them, and what would you have? . . . It would be intolerable, insufferable.”9 President Packer didn’t quite say, as did Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, that “the existence of the world is justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon,” but they both recognize that our existence would be miserable without art.10 When asked in the interview whether LDS artists should produce only religious art, he answered, no—certain circumstances call for devotional art, but art need not be religiously oriented to be good: “You can do anything you want,” he explained. “Everything that is lovely, or praiseworthy, of good report—we seek after these things. . . . Members of the Church in the arts can do what they want. . . . But they ought to do it well, and they have the right to do it with inspiration.”
Speaking specifically about how LDS artists can prepare to “do it well,” President Packer said that talent and inspiration are not enough; great artists, writers, and musicians need training—which means, at least in part, that they need to learn what the world can teach them. He specifically addressed turn-of-the-century LDS art missionaries who traveled at Church expense to study drawing and painting in the worldly salons of nineteenth-century Paris in preparation for painting the Salt Lake Temple murals. President Packer explained:
The temple was underway, and it was about to the point where they were going to do the interiors and the appointments, and so they called to begin with four brethren and they sent them to Paris to study painting in order to do the interior painting. And I thought that that’s a lesson because we have members in the Church who are in the field of the arts and who have an idea that “inspiration will come, and I have talent, and that’s all I need.” Well, they had inspiration, and they had all the talent, but they needed to be trained, they needed to do the work, to learn the fundamentals, the basics, in order that they could produce works of art, particularly in the temple, that would be creditable.11
He then referred to Oliver Cowdery’s failed attempt to translate the Book of Mormon by relying only on inspiration, and said that just as Oliver Cowdery had to do everything within his power first, so too do artists. And we might add: so too do ordinary students and viewers of art.
We have to work. We have to train. We have to learn from the world and from the history of art, film, music, and literature everything we can. And those of us who are teachers have a sacred obligation to help our students do all of this. Of course, we don’t fulfill that obli- gation by teaching art history classes in which we show paintings and sculptures that are patently offensive or disrespectful of the human body and human relations. But neither do we fulfill it by teaching a Shakespeare class in which we only read those passages that contain nothing that could possibly offend. We fulfill our obligation by care- fully and prayerfully deciding what materials to use and how to use them, and by teaching others, through example and principle, how to seek and recognize on their own the good, the true, and the beau- tiful—even when tainted, at times, by elements we don’t endorse but can nevertheless excuse when they’re not too serious.
Seeing Life Whole
Brigham Young organized the Deseret Dramatic Association just two years after entering the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. He opened the first playhouse west of the Missouri River only four years later. In 1853, he wrote the following about theater—though I think we can extrapolate his remarks to any and all of the arts:
Upon the stage of a theater can be represented in character, evil and its consequences, good and its happy results and rewards; the weakness and the follies of man, the magnanimity of virtue and the greatness of truth. The stage can be made to aid the pulpit in impressing upon the minds of a community an enlightened sense of a virtuous life, also a proper horror of the enormity of sin and a just dread of its consequences. The path of sin with its thorns and pitfalls, its traps and snares can be revealed, and how to shun it.12
Brigham Young suggests here that art has the capacity to nurture within us an understanding of what Aristotle in the Poetics called “universal truths.”13 This capacity is perhaps what BYU’s own Gerrit de Jong called “culture”—the ability to see life whole, a familiarity with “the best that has been thought and the best that has been done in the world.”14 Such wisdom is not developed by limiting our experiences to artistic portrayals of what Brigham Young called the “good and its happy results.” It also requires being able to learn from wise, truthful, and tasteful representations of “evil and its consequences.” It indeed requires an ability to see life whole.
Art can and sometimes should address troubling matters. Admittedly, since artists and teachers are no more perfect than the rest of us, those treatments are sometimes less wise, truthful, and tasteful than they should be. But unless they suffer from serious flaws, we should be able and willing to glean from them all that is good—and deal judi- ciously with the rest. I believe that when we fail in our responsibility to require of ourselves, our students, or our children an engagement with great art, film, drama, and literature, merely out of fear that such works might offend or fall short of perfection—when we insist upon a sheltered, provincial experience of the world—we silently conspire with each other to underwrite a cultural illiteracy that is tragic and spiritually stunting. We do each other no true service. We light no fire in each other’s heart. And we decidedly do not seek after that which is virtuous, lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy.
In the Italian film Cinema Paradiso (Tornatore, Italy, 1990), a father- less boy named Salvatore grows up enthralled by the movies he watches in his town’s only theater, even though every expression of love—every kiss, every embrace, every caress—is edited out of the movies by a well-meaning local priest. But Salvatore is himself loved and mentored by Alfredo, the kindly projectionist. As Salvatore grows up, he falls in love with a beautiful girl, loses her, moves away, and becomes a famous movie director. Though accomplished and celebrated, he finds himself dissatisfied with his empty life, perpetually unable to realize true love and happiness. When the wise old projectionist dies and Salvatore returns home for the funeral, his aged mother gives him a gift from Alfredo: a reel of film composed entirely of the clips Alfredo had been forced to cut from the films the boy had watched while growing up. It is a breathtaking montage of love, passion, and life at its most beautiful. Cinema Paradiso, as the title intimates, ends with the suggestion that art can help us redeem an incomplete life: The affection that had been edited out of the protagonist’s life by the tragedies of his fatherless childhood and lost love are restored to him from beyond the grave by someone who cared for him as much as any father. And art is the medium of that restoration.
In conclusion, I hope that, yes, we will be wise in deciding what art we embrace. But I also hope our decisions will be judicious and not judgmental, aimed at seeking the good, rather than just avoiding the bad. I especially hope we will redouble our commitment to kindle and rekindle in each other’s hearts the passion for art, music, drama, philosophy, and literature that fired the flame of our own various searches after all that is virtuous and good. For only thereby can we realize the creativity and love of beauty and goodness that constitutes our true spiritual likeness to God.
Travis T. Anderson, associate professor of philosophy at Brigham Young University, regularly teaches film artistry and theory classes in addition to philosophy courses. He has mentored more than 20 film projects for his students in film classes for the Philosophy Department and the BYU Honors Program. He directed the BYU International Cinema Program from 2000 to 2007.
This article was adapted from a devotional address given to Brigham Young University’s College of Humanities on March 8, 2001. Visit https://byustudies.byu.edu/content/seeking-after-good-art -drama-film-and-literature to read the complete, unabridged version, “Seeking After the Good in Art, Film, and Drama, and Literature,” first published in BYU Studies 46, No. 2 (2007), pp. 231–246.
1. Aristotle, Politics, trans. Benjamin Jowett (New York: Carlton House, 1943), section 1339a.
2. Brigham Young, in Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (Liverpool: F. D. Richards, 1855–86), 12:124, December 29, 1867.
3. Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and Willard Richards, in “Sixth General Epistle, September 22, 1851,” Messages of the First Presidency, comp. James R. Clark, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1965), 2:86.
4. Discourses of Brigham Young: Second President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, ed. John A. Widtsoe (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1983), 279.
5. “The Gospel Opens Communication with Jehovah: Paragraphs from a Sermon Delivered by President John Taylor, June 12, 1853,” in Scrapbook of Mormon Literature, ed. Ben. E. Rich, 2 vols. (Chicago: Henry C. Etten, n.d.), 2:224.
6. The Gospel Kingdom: Selections from the Writings and Discourses of John Taylor, ed. G. Homer Durham (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1987), 277.
7. David Hume, “Of the Standard of Taste,” in Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985), 247.
8. http://www.bfi.org.uk/news/50-greatest-films-all-time
9. Boyd K. Packer, The Artist and the Spirit: A Conversation with President Boyd K. Packer and James C. Christensen, videocassette recording (Provo, Utah: LDS Motion Picture Studio, 1998).
10. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. and ed. Ian Johnston, http://www.mala.bc.ca/~Johnstoi/Neitzsche/tragedy_all.htm. 11. Packer, Artist and the Spirit.
12. Discourses of Brigham Young, 243.
13. Aristotle, Poetics, section 9.
14. Gerrit de Jong, “Art and Life,” address to the BYU student body, January 5, 1953, 2, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, emphasis in original.